About

"I learned that you get what you pay for in this life. From then on, I always bought the best materials the customer could afford and did the job to the best of my ability no matter how long it took me."  -Mark Cowden

My earliest memories involve holding the flashlight for my dad as he repaired a kitchen sink or helping him fetch tools when he was performing carpentry work. My dad was the local handyman in the small town I grew up in. Nowadays, when I think of a handyman, I think of a jack of all trades and a master of none. But, that was not my dad. He was born and raised in Dallas,TX. Before relocating his family to a small East Texas town, he was the Senior Facilities Manager for some very large companies, where he managed maintenance and repair technicians.

As a handyman, you can imagine that he was in high demand. He always charged less than what the work was worth. He wasn’t cheap, it’s just that the work he did was always worth more than what he would charge. He would always buy the more expensive materials and take longer to do the job than others would. To this day when I go back home, I drive around that little town and I’m proud to see work he did 30 years ago that still looks great. Windows, doors, patios, sprinkler systems, you name it. 

As a little kid, I would go and help him just because I wanted to be in his company. As time passed and I entered into high school, I began to do jobs for him on my own. We butted heads a lot at first. I would want to buy the less expensive materials and cut corners to make a little extra money. He would get upset with me after seeing the finished work I had done. At first, I thought he was just being too hard on me. But then I began to see how my work began to get callbacks from some unsatisfied customers. Sometimes this would happen months later. I would then have to go back and repair my less-than-quality work. Most of the time, I’d do this for free. But it was not the money that bothered me, it was the fact that these were people I knew and I saw them in town regularly. I felt like I was tainting my family’s reputation. I knew I had to make some changes in my work. My work was not terrible, it just was not what locals had come to expect from my dad. 

I learned that you get what you pay for in this life. From then on, I always bought the best materials the customer could afford and did the job to the best of my ability no matter how long it took me. In my senior year of high school, I knew I could not do four more years of school. It’s not that I was not smart enough. I could have gone to UT or Texas A&M. But I have ADHD and I wanted to go to work. I did not want to be a handyman, however. My brother had finished his training as a master plumber and I knew that’s not the path I wanted to take. 

I always enjoyed HVAC and wanted to learn more. So, I enrolled at Tyler Junior College after my graduation. I did not know it at the time but TJC had one of the best HVAC programs in the country. Two major HVAC manufacturers are based in Tyler - Trane (formally GE electric) and Carrier. The HVAC program was run by the senior engineer at Train. There were three other engineers that also taught classes. There was a skilled labor shortage in the early '90s, much like today. The engineers worked their day jobs and then taught classes at night. Shortly after, I got a job with a local A/C company as a helper. I went to school five days a week and three nights a week. The program stretched over a period of two years. At the time I was required to attend basic classes as well as HVAC classes, so I ended up with an Associate's degree. 

With a young wife and wanting to start a family, we came to realize it's hard to make a living in a small town, so we moved to the metroplex. I got a job with a mid-sized HVAC company. Although it was a good company, the customer service was very different in a large town, compared to the small town I came from. Everything moved at a much faster pace. Mostly, the goal was to get the job done quickly, collect the money and move to your next customer. This was a hard adjustment to make. I made my way through the ranks and have worked in just about every position in the HVAC world.

Realizing the need for a customer-satisfaction-focused approach in the HVAC industry, we managed to save up and bought the HVAC company we now own today - Beco Air & Heat, and we haven’t looked back since!